The Illinois Department of Transportation increased the number of patronage positions — jobs that can be filled based on politics or loyalty — by 57 percent in the last decade, documents released Friday show.

Gov. Pat Quinn’s office divulged 137 pages of memos sought by an anti-patronage activist in a lawsuit he filed this week. Attorney Michael Shakman is seeking an investigation of hiring under the Democratic governor. The documents are copies of memos written between Quinn’s office and IDOT since 2011.

They deal with the hiring of people for “staff assistant” positions, generally paying about $40,000 a year, that the administration deemed were exempt from rules set forth by the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1990 ruling known as Rutan. The Better Government Association reported last summer that IDOT skirted Rutan prohibitions on hiring based on politics or loyalty by putting people into the staff assistant positions, sometimes moving them from there into better jobs.

Quinn has said he took action immediately last summer and ordered an audit of jobs to determine whether Rutan applied to them.

“We have zero tolerance for any violation of hiring procedures,” Quinn spokeswoman Brooke Anderson said in a statement.

Rutan is supposed to apply to lower-level positions, reserving them for the most qualified applicants, not the ones with the most clout. Those positions exempt from Rutan are supposed to be policymaking positions, the idea being that a governor should be able to hire whomever he wants for his closest advisers and confidantes.

One employee identified in the public documents who was hired as a staff assistant is Tim Carroll, son of Leo Carroll of Teamsters Local 916, who is listed on the union website as executive assistant. The documents show he was a candidate for staff assistant in July 2011, but an online state database does not indicate he is an employee.

A number for Tim Carroll could not be located Friday. An email left after hours through the Teamsters for Leo Carroll was not immediately returned.

The BGA report prompted Shakman, for whom a 40-year-old anti-patronage decree is named, to file a motion in federal court this week asking for a monitor to investigate Quinn hiring. In it, he says he requested correspondence between the governor’s office and IDOT regarding the filling of staff assistant positions.

Shakman found 374 Rutan-exempt positions at IDOT, which he said was an “extraordinary” number of policymaking positions at an agency of 5,000 employees.

Quinn’s office initially denied the Freedom of Information Act request, filed in September 2013, according to Shakman’s court motion, under an exception in FOIA that allows withholding documents characterized as “preliminary” or in which opinions are expressed or policies formulated.

Anderson said Friday that Quinn’s office offered the documents to Shakman Monday, but he did not accept them. Shakman did not immediately return a message seeking comment.

Page 2 of 2 - IDOT said the audit Quinn ordered was of just 61 positions — those still classified as staff assistants — and that the state’s personnel agency, the Department of Central Management Services, found that Rutan applied to 50 of them. IDOT said Rutan restrictions would be followed when filling those positions going forward but did not indicate that anyone would lose his job.

Anderson said Friday that the updated number is 48 of 60 posts found to be misclassified and would not be covered by Rutan rules.